Admiral Yamamoto infamously said "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a man with a rifle behind every blade of grass."
And so it should be, a nation of riflemen....

Friday, March 24, 2017

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Well, got the wife off to Colorado this morning, no thanks to Frontier Airlines. I've only flown on them once, and it was enough. She'd booked this flight a couple of months ago, as Saturday is the baby shower for little Noah, who arrived a wee bit early.

Her flight on Frontier was scheduled for an 1100 departure from John Wayne Airport down in Orange County, and they texted her a cancellation notice last night about 1800 citing a "Spring snowstorm" as the reason for the cancellation.

HUH? Now I know the National Weather Service has been getting a lot of flack lately for their "ZOMG!!!" weather "forecasts", and especially for their "ZOMG!!! SNOWMAGEDDON!!!!" forecast stunt they pulled a coupe,of weeks ago which literally shut down parts of the East coast. I looked at the satellite pictures, and the weather radar data, wet my finger and stuck it in the air, and decided that *if* Denver got much snow, DIA could handle it well, keeping the runways plowed (you get pretty good at the stuff after a while), and I certainly couldn't see any reasonable cause to cancel that particular flight considering that NONE of the other airlines serving Denver even had any delays expected.

I jumped on the old Intertubes and found her a flight on United leaving at 0947 from LAX this morning, nonstop, and while it cost almost double what her "economy" fare on Frontier cost. it had seats available, and gave you one free carry on bag.

Oh, did I mention that Frontier now charges $25 for a carry on bag?

Say what??

The only reason I can see for this is that they're stuffing the belly of the aircraft full of cargo, and the less stuff the passengers bring on board, the more cargo they can cram into the plane. I'll be on the Iowa all day tomorrow for Viet Nam Veteran's Day (Thank you all for your service), and one of our radio operators is a retied 747 Captain, so I'll ask him what he knows about this. He keeps up on industry trends, so he might know.

Our daughter-in-law laughed when we told Frontier had canceled the flight, saying it's been in the middle to upper 70's the last week!

So anyway......she's safely in Fort Collins now, and got to hold little Noah for the first time. She told me "He's barely bigger than a breath!", and that he opened his eyes and smiled at her, and reached out to grab her hair.

My wife was immediately overcome with "Grandma Love", so I imagine after she gets back Sunday afternoon we'll kick things up a notch to start getting things packed up in preparation for shipping a couple of "pods" there ahead of us. We're going back the last week of May to see the kids again and do some serious house hunting, and I know her holding the little guy today just increased her desire to move there by, oh, maybe 200% or so.

And in the Automotive News section today.....Edd China has announced that after 13 seasons he's leaving "Wheeler Dealers", one of my favorite "reality" auto restoration shows.

When Discovery Network took over the show they wanted to glam it up a bit, claiming that there was too much time spent in each show showing Edd working on and modifying the car.

Hey, idiots, that's what we watch it for!

So, due to the infamous "creative differences", Mr. China has decided to leave the show and focus on his other enterprises and new projects.
Good luck, Edd. You WILL be missed!

I take issue with some of their past episodes where Mike Brewer overstated what work was done on the car as he gave the sales pitch to the buyer, but still, I always found it entertaining, and learned more than few good tips from Edd.

So, that's a wrap for this entry. I'll be yakking on NI6BB all day tomorrow, thanking our veterans, and enjoying the live music and food that are always a pert of these events.

19 comments:

The predicted "big storm" didn't happen. Frontier has gone BK several times. As to stuffing their cargo compartments, that isn't happening at DIA. I'm at the air freight facility three days a week and rarely see anything at their dock. Alaska Airlines seems to get most of the freight going West. Air General handles Alaska's freight biz along with Delta and American. The stuff I pickup goes out on Delta.

If Edd won't be there, I won't be watching. He was always informative. Who cares that they buy cars and flip them if we can't watch the transformation?

Hubby watches a lot of the shows. Counts Kustoms, or whatever. Gas Monkey (which I do not like), and a couple of others I don't remember the names of. I liked Wheeler Dealers. It was, one of my favorite restoration/rebuild shows, too.'

Edd China was the only reason for watching that show, and has taught me a number of tips & tricks. I only hope that, wherever he lands, we're able to see him. Meanwhile, you've reinforced my belief in sticking with the airline we know. There are others available, here, although not as many as in the Lower 48 (Alaskans don't know what to do with Hawaii beyond visiting there - heh). But at least our checked bags are free.

Wdd will be doing some things back in the UK, and I suspect we'll get a show out of it.

Old_NFO had a post about bad airlines, and Frontier was mentioned more than once as being and "airline of last resort".

When I was globe hopping, I liked TWA, SAS, and SwissAir. SAS had incredibly good food!

Not sure if I ever had a "favorite" domestic airline, but I went United a lot, and wound up dating a flight attendant that I met on one of my numerous flights out of O'Hare, where she was based.

Then we found Jet America, who flew into Long Beach airport, and switched to that at my office.

Long Beach airport is a real gem of an airport. Too bad the flights originating there don't go to very many places. We can get flights to Denver, but you have to change planes in Salt Lake City, and if the weather is bad, you can miss your connecting flight.

When I had to fly to get to basic and home on leave, I enjoyed Braniff. When it was Braniff. Don't like any airline any more with all the security crap.Sister-in-law retired from United, if I remember correctly. Now the BIL is always bragging on his free (standby) flights.

I never flew Braniff. Jet America bought most of their aircraft when Braniff went belly-up, and I remember how nice the interiors of the aircraft were. Braniff always prided themselves on high quality service, and "Super Deluxe" interiors with real leather seats were a part of all the fleet.

Her final paperwork to retire has been processed, and the countdown is on.

I'll be listing some "dump it on eBay" items today, and gearing up for a bunch more of that.

I've started going through my stacks of magazines (the paper kind), and I've thrown about 100 pounds of old radio magazines away, 95% of the old issues of "American Rifleman" I had, and dozens of outdated catalogs.

She harped on me a bit about some of the old catalogs I had, then piped down when she saw I was getting anywhere from $10 to $50 ( ! ) for them on eBay!

All the 'old' magazines, should you have more, should be donated to the Vet center, hospitals, VFWs, etc. Heck, even doctors offices. I love finding something good to read, instead of the usual Family Circle, etc.

About Me

Just another cranky old fart, professional radio nerd and computer geek, and former Uber-Gearhead, who values independence, freedom, and liberty for all.....
This Blog is basically a "Blog About Nothing", and expresses only my own opinions and observations about life and the world around me.